Duron, AMD's "value" chip based on the Athlon core, will be available in NEC's LaVie U series of notebooks from 25 January and are shipping in volume immediately. The chip is available in speed grades of 600MHz and 700MHz for $75 (£50) and $123, respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

"AMD has had tremendous success with the Mobile AMD-K6 family of processors, and plans to build on that success with a new family of seventh-generation mobile products in 2001," said Pat Moorhead, vice president of marketing at AMD's Computation Products Group, in a statement.

Duron competes with Intel's Celeron processor. Intel is planning to release an ultra-low-power 500MHz mobile Celeron this month for around $100. AMD and Intel both have to contend with chips from Transmeta, which claim to use far less power, though this is currently achieved somewhat at the expense of processor speed.

See Chips Central for daily hardware news, including interactive roadmaps for AMD, Intel and Transmeta.

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